Off Road!

Simone and I rode the Trail-A-Long to Avery Park this afternoon.

Right when we got there I asked her if she wanted to take the dirt path that goes around the park.  She was very excited and we rode it all the way from the Mary's River crossing to Lion's Kitchen.  And then we rode it back the other direction.

Lots of "whee!" interspersed with "boing" as we went over rockier portions of the trail.

Hopefully the first of many off-road adventures.

Running

I started running again - with the intention of seeing whether or not my body would be agreeable to do it for another Beaver Freezer.  A friend from Life Works (that seminar I just finished) told me she'd come and race with me if I did it (she has a goal of competing in a race of some kind in each of the 50 states).

So, I'm spending January figuring it out.

My body isn't crazy about running, but I think it will be ok with me doing the Freezer.

Yesterday's run was in the mist, and the streams were flowing high.  I took a couple of crummy photos with my iPhone.

At the end, my knees complained a little bit (I resorted to more walking than running), but was happy to be outdoors.

Self-Made Coloring Book Pages

Just the other day, Simone decided to draw some pages to color in.  We've had a couple of different coloring books, and she likes them well enough.  Lately she's paid a fair amount of attention to coloring in the lines and choosing very specific colors.  I've always preferred her free-hand drawings, but some of the colorings have been very pretty.

This, however, was a new twist.  She drew two pictures with black pen and we colored one in together.  I had artistic reign over the fairies (well, one had to be a rainbow fairy, oh, and they needed blue eyes and gold hair, but I did the coloring), and I colored in the brown roof, the chimney, and the tree.  But I just love her drawing, with the wings and the tu-tu.

And then she drew another page, which we didn't get to color.  It's a drawing of Jade (the larger one) and Juptier.

Simone Book

Simone loves creating things.  Last fall (Sept 2011) she wrote a book.  Well, she wrote many books, but one in particular stood apart.  I just scanned the images in, and here it is.

Of course it has a title page, which is her name:

Mary got some watercolor pencils, which are way cool.  You draw with the pencils, using whatever colors you want, and then you come back with a water brush and apply the water and you get a water color painting.

Simone loves using them.  She draws with a pen for the outline, and then colors it in.

I can't remember if the next drawing was a boat, or just the clay birdhouse we have in the back yard.  Ah, that's probably it, the birdhouse was sitting in one of the clay pots that have soil.

I knew I should have kept notes, I'm pretty sure this is a picture of Hazel.  She was really missing Hazel last fall.

 Flowers are a big part of her drawing.  Though this one actually reminds me of a duck.  This one is a black-eyed susan.

 I believe the next one is a self portrait, note the blue eyes and blonde hair.  She is wearing her Hawaii dress.

Rainbows were probably the first concrete thing Simone started drawing, and they make frequent appearances.  Edit: Simone informed me this is a sunset - which makes sense, there's no green.

From another picture she drew about the same time, I think this is a picture of the horse named "Red."

After creating all the pages, Simone ripped them out of the notebook and stapled them together.  She's made a number of books, some are full-blown stories, and some are more abstract.  This is certainly one of my favorites.

Edit: This morning I showed Simone the pictures and she read the file names and corrected me on several accounts.  So, she recognizes the words rainbow, clifford (I'd incorrectly named the in the filename).

Three Weeks In

We're in the new year, and what's happened?

I had LASIK (at PCLI) and it went really well, though I'm itching to get back to mountain biking (I took a week off as a precaution, then had other things get in the way - including the flooding of Corvallis which has closed down the forest b/c of landslides).

I finished up the Life Works seminar, which was  a great experience.

The last weekend of LW, Simone caught a bit of a stomach flu and was puking all weekend, I returned from my weekend away to help out as Mary got winged by it, and then I took a day off because it laid me low for a day.  I think it's our first illness that got all three of us.

Simone is drawing lots (I really want to scan them in... maybe that'll be tonight's project), and speaking more and more complicated - I wonder where my little girl has gone.

This weekend is a papa weekend as Mary is at a conference.  Simone and I played outside in the brief patch of  sun, we made mustard and kimchi, we read lots of books, and then more books, and we've been eating lots - including rice pudding for dessert.

Mary hung up some paper lamps in the bedrooms, and the fairies turn them on and off for us.  The three in our bedroom are remote-controlled, so the mystery might still be holding there.  It's hard to tell if Simone is just playing along or if she still believes.

Tonight I read "A Fairy Went A-Marketing" to Simone while she took a bath.  Cute book, great illustrations.  How geeky of me was it that when the fairy gave a coat to a frog my first thought was, "That's not right!  Frogs are cold-blooded!  What is this book teaching?!"

The year has started off well - looking forward to the remaining 49 weeks!

New Year

Well, it's a new year.

The highlights so far - a lovely 3+ hour walk with Mary through the woods (Lewisburg Saddle to the top of Dimple Hill, down Dan's and back) while Simone was at school, then lunch at Vietnamese food, then a 2 hour mountain bike ride up to the top of McCulloch Peak (taking nearly 3 minutes off my PR, yay!), and coming home to see Mary and Simone, both happy to see me.

The lowlights so far: Spending nearly 8 hours re-installing all the software on my laptop from scratch (yes, I could buy a new one, but facing 8 hours versus $1K, I went with the time I had).

It's Good

Simone woke up early this morning and called out for me.  When I came into her room she wanted help blowing her nose and then asked if I could snuggle.  As I snuggled in next to her she said, "It's good to snuggle in the morning."

It certainly is.

Breakfast

So we're at the beach for Thanksgiving.  Mary, Simone and I drove through Astoria because 101 is flooded just south of Seaside.  The road is flooded because there was a crazy storm happening, winds up to 60mph (seemed like 80, but what do I know).

We woke up (I use that term loosely, I slept in until 8:30) and then decided to have some breakfast.  Oatmeal porridge was on the menu, but for some reason Mary pulled down a package of marshmallows, and she said the word "marshmallow."

Of course Simone heard this and came into the kitchen asking about them, face very bright and excited.  There were two bags.  One of the ridiculously over-sized large marshmallows - large enough that you need a graham cracker the size of a piece of sandwich bread to match.  The other bag was the regular size marshmallow.  Simone told us how the big ones make her sick and she'll "never eat those again" ("never" and "always" are popular terms right now, everything is absolute).  However, she did want one of the regular-sized ones.

She had 3 marshmallows, very excited about each one - I should have gotten it on video.

We did actually eat oatmeal after than, and then I high-tailed it to McMennemin's to put in half a day of work, leaving Mary to hang out with Simone hopped up on sugar.

good-luck!

Riding With Simone To School

Simone and I rode to school today.

Yup, she's in kindergarten at the big Waldorf school, it's her second full week.

We woke up this morning, had breakfast (hens in pens), dressed up nice and warm, hopped on our bike and road the 6 miles or so to school. It was super foggy in parts - I meant to take a photo of some trees in the fog, but I wanted to be to sure to get to school on time.

We got there in plenty of time, being the second kid in the class to walk in.

Simone peeled off her many layers, kissed me goodbye and she was off.

It felt great to ride her to school, and I hope to do it a few more times before the rain sets in.

I took a slightly longer way home, riding along Walnut/53rd, and I did take the time to snap a photo of the sun shining through the oak trees. I was on a bit of a hill here, and was just barely out of the fog, about 2 minutes later I was back in the thick of things.

I do love the fall weather - let's hope it sticks around for a while longer.

If Only "The Onion" Reported Real News...

I didn't read/follow much of the 9/11 navel-gazing that happened, but I saw that The Onion wrote a piece and thought I'd check it out. It's worth a read (it's really more sad/ironic than funny).

U.S. Commemorates 9/11 By Toasting Stable Afghan Government From Top Of Freedom Tower | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

NEW YORK—In a moving and beautiful ceremony held atop Lower Manhattan's gleaming, 120-story-tall Freedom Tower, the nation commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by raising a glass to the stable democracy of Afghanistan and to a decade of unprecedented peace and prosperity across the globe.

A sobering/depressing read

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:

"If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power."

He heaps a lot of blame on the Republicans and (more or less) discounts the Democrats as incompetent. I think I'd disagree with that statement about the Democrats - I think they're basically in cahoots with the Republicans. This isn't Gilligan's Island, the Dems are professional politicians - they know what they're doing, they know who butters their bread - it's the same as who butters the GOP's bread - large corporate interests...

I do have half a mind to take Mary up on her occasional, "we should move to another country..." thought.

Wouldn't that shock people.

Farm to Farm - a ride for me

Mary noticed a bike ride coming up, the Farm to Farm.  It totally has my name written all over it.  A ride through the countryside, with 4 stops along the way at farms with fresh food, ending with a meal made from the ingredients from the farms.  Woo-hoo!

I'm in.  Anyone else?

Studying Obesity

(From the archives, a post started in January 2011 but never finished)

Today I saw two articles. The first was in our Friday paper: "OSU wins $5 million grant for rural childhood obesity research", and the second was a blog post "The American Fast Food Syndrome". Oh, and I heard a story on the radio last night, "Overburdened Food Banks Can't Say No To Junk."

It got me to thinking about obesity again, and wondering how much money will we throw at studying this problem and how much time (lives) will we waste?

The OSU research has a goal of "improv[ing] the fitness level and reduce the body mass index of rural children, ages 5 to 8." That's a great goal, and you do need specific goals in order to win research money. Which are you more likely to give money to, a study with the goal, "make people happier" or one whose goal is "decrease incidence of days of depression in 20-25 year olds"?

We, in the U.S., seem to like to research the hell out of things and not do anything about it. How many diet/lifestyle studies do we need to do?

It's clear that if we feed ourselves too much food, and crummy food at that, we're going to get fat.  The government heavily subsidizes corn/soy/wheat/sugar and that gets turned into cheap junk food.

Biking and a Hike

We found a trail-a-bike (tag-a-long) on Craig's List yesterday and I picked it up today.  We should have gotten one in the beginning of the summer...  oh well.

We hooked it up and Simone and I went riding off into the summer day.  She had a blast, and so did I.  Simone  felt very confident on the bike (after the initial 30 seconds of "I'm tired"), and about half way into our ride she was pedaling enough that I could feel the help.  I'd occasionally stop pedaling (on request) so she could be the one to make us go, and I'd do all the steering.

We went through Avery park, to Noah's house (he wasn't there), and then on to Bohdie's (he was, we chatted for a few minutes), and then we came back through Avery park to see the big train engine there.  All in all, we covered nearly 8 miles, and Simone would have easily gone another 4 (she was asking to go further).

Instead we came home to connect with Mary, who was hanging out at home recovering from her first half-marathon.  Yay Mary!  She did it with Tracy (Bohdie's mother), so the papas and the kids rolled down a little later to catch the mamas as they crossed the finish line.  Tracy finished 49th out of the 1000 - running way fast (about 1h45m).  Simone and I walked them back to their car and made it back to the finish line a few minutes before Mary crossed - so we cheered her on.

Anyway, we came home from the bike ride to tell Mary all about it, and then headed out to Alsea Falls for a little hike and to cool our feed in the water.  We rarely go out there, and I don't know why - it's lovely.  We crossed over the creek and headed down the trail to where it got a little slippery.  But we made it down to the water and hung out in the bottom of the gorge on big rocks, wading in the water, feeling as though we had the entire forest to ourselves.

A wonderful labor day to finish a great weekend.

It Begins

Today was my first meeting at Weight Watchers.  I weighed in at 263.8 pounds (socks, shorts, t-shirt), and I've got my goals set.

The leader (Sandy) is energetic and pretty entertaining (though she reminds me a little bit of my mom...)

Here's to reaching some new goals and staying there.  The medium-term goal is 235 pounds, but first I've gotta lose 5 pounds (you get a gold star! - it's just like kindergarten)...

An Adventure

We woke up this morning and figured we'd try something new, and adventure perhaps. So, after a rousing game of bananagrams,

Mary made one of our favorite breakfasts, sunny-side-up eggs over a bed of wilted spinach. yum! We then piled into the car

and headed off for a little hike just outside of Lincoln City called Drift Creek Falls. We'd never been there before and it sounded neat. The last 10 miles of the drive there were through a narrow, winding road, and it seemed as though we were going into the middle of nowhere. But, when we arrived, there was a huge paved parking area with space for 20 cars, most of which were filled. We parked, hopped out, and headed down the path. The trail is very gentle, mostly following a ridge down to a little creek at the bottom. You walk through a variety of sunny forest with lots of vegetation, and darker forest along a steeper portion of the hill.

After getting to the bottom, we had a snack next to the stream:

Drift Creek from Trey Jackson on Vimeo.

We crossed the stream, walked through some nice old growth forest

and then came to a neat suspension bridge over a surprisingly large gorge (very little water seemed to flow through it)

We then hiked down to the bottom to dip our feet in (Simone came fully prepared with water wings)

The hike back out was almost as nice - a little busier, and uphill of course. Simone did find one little fairy chair to sit in on the way out.

After the nice hike, we drove into Lincoln City and found lunch at a wonderful cafe named Blackfish Cafe. The fish and chips was awesome, Mary's fish tacos were delicious - almost as good as her glass of wine. And the hostess said dinner was even better (reservations recommended). The fog rolled in, and Mary and Simone started to fall asleep, so I pulled into Agate Beach (a childhood favorite of Mary's) and we played in the sand there for an hour. There are sand dunes all over the beach, ranging from 2 feet tall to nearly 6 feet. Much fun for climbing, sliding, jumping and the occasional tackle.

We finished the day with a light dinner at Mo's, some ice cream (and brownie!!!) for dessert and then headed home.

A very good day indeed.

Camping In Her Room

Last night Simone camped in her room, it was very exciting.

 

Vision

I went to the eye doctor about a month ago. It'd been... 6 years? Something like that.

My contacts were beginning to bother me, which, it turns out, is expected because the lifetime of gas permeable lenses is 5 years. Oh, and the fcsking cleaning product tells you to clean it in a way that warps the lenses.

So I go and get some soft contacts. I like the gas permeable, but they shape your eyes a little bit. And that's a problem if you want to get LASIK. So I'm in soft lenses, and my eyes are slowly changing shape - reverting to whatever their "natural" shape is.

It's been 5 weeks and my eyes are settling down pretty well. With my next set I should have 20/10 vision.

For Fox Sake

I've been debating with a guy about a variety of things, he's arguing from the standard GOP talking points.

I've come to the conclusion (broad generalization coming) people like him live in a constant state of fear: fear of Marxists/communists trying to subvert the government, and fear of the global Muslim jihad. It's not a grip of fear that controls every aspect of life, but a constant fear nonetheless.

Another theme also seems to be that the liberal media is just not giving their viewpoint the time it deserves. If the rest of us (non-Republicans) just knew what they (Republicans) know...

While I don't think Comedy Central is necessarily the place to look for objective reporting. I do think this recent Daily Show segment sums up how I felt during the debate very nicely:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Oh, for Fox Sake
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Plus, there's the classic Stephen Colbert quote, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Climbing Through The Eyes Of A Five Year Old

Simone drew some pictures of Sam and I climbing Mt. Hood. I think they're great.

The first is just the two of us on the mountain.



But, as the second drawing shows, as Sam and I reached the summit, a blizzard began.